


Just Hug Him, Angel!

by SporkofDoom



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), M/M, Matchmaker Anathema Device
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:47:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25407904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SporkofDoom/pseuds/SporkofDoom
Summary: Aziraphale and Anathema retrace Aziraphale's mistakes. She helps him untangle his feelings and provides practical guidance.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 53





	Just Hug Him, Angel!

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my beta reader, Mizmak, for her excellent suggestions and editing assistance. This is a far better story for her help.

“I always knew Armageddon was on the schedule because of Agnes,” Anathema said reflectively.

“Ah.” The angel sipped his scotch. “I did not. I’d heard about the plan my whole life, of course, but I don’t think I was listening. I just assumed that Armageddon was what happened when things went _wrong_. The fact that Gabriel and others thought Armageddon was an example of things going _right_ , somehow I’d missed that.

“I should have been paying attention, you see, but I wasn’t. You have to understand: I thought we were angels. I thought I knew what ‘angel’ meant. Odd, really. I mean, I was such a fool. I kept trying to stop the war while everyone just smiled at me, like I was an endearing but rather slow child. Oscar Wilde was quite right. “When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.” And they certainly did make an ass out me. They would have made me into a char-grilled ass if not for Crowley. They _wanted_ that war.”

“So senseless,” Anathema said softly.

“Of course you think that. You have a life. You have a garden, books, young Pulsifer, and chocolate chip cookies. You have all of Tadfield, and friends to take you to London. You, my dear, have something to lose. What did they have to lose? Only their boredom, I suspect.”

He shuddered.

“If you had ever taken the escalator upstairs, you would understand. Climb every mountain? What mountain? Not even a tiny hillock there. Ford every stream? Well, I suppose one might leap across a water feature or walk through a fountain. Heaven has no paramours, tomato vines or plates of chocolate chip cookies, just an endless collection of glass walls and an occasional well-tamed water feature. Mies Van der Rohe was one of ours, you know. Heaven would get the minimalists.”

“Sounds awful,” Anathema said sympathetically.

“It is,” the angel said emphatically. “I would so much rather be in London or Edinburgh than Heaven.”

“Amazing,” she said. “And no cookies.”

“Truly amazing,” Aziraphale agreed. “Although to be fair, I should tell you the black market for cookies has been thriving ever since humankind found out what they could do with butter, flour and sugar. But why should an angel have to _sneak_ a cookie?”

“Why indeed?” Anathema commiserated.

The angel tilted his head slightly to one side, and puckered his lips in thought. He took a small bite of chocolate, put the rest of his chocolate down in the center of his napkin. Anathema waited.

“Without Crowley... I could never have done it alone. No one listened to me, even though they made polite sounds when I talked. He didn’t listen to me either.”

“It seems to me he listens to you,” Anathema arched her eyebrows with a faint half-smile. 

“Does he? Well, he didn’t back then. I told him we could not work together. I told him we could not be together. I kept telling him the things I had been taught to believe and he kept ignoring me. He might slow the car down a bit, but then he sped right back up again.

“Still, he understood so much more than I did,” Aziraphale confessed. “He still does probably, although I know something he doesn’t. I want to tell him too, if only I could find the right opening.”

Aziraphale looked intently at Anathema, as if about to explain what he had just said. But then, looking down at a reflection of a chandelier in his scotch glass, Aziraphale sighed. He leaned back in his plush, brown armchair, settling in to talk about Armageddon (or non-Armageddon) instead.

_____________________________________________________________________________

“You have to understand I had known Crowley since, well, since the dawn of time. We got together to chat and share the occasional lunch or bottle of wine or spirits. We were very off and on. I found him delightfully intriguing really, but roguish enough so that… I tried to keep my distance. Our friendship was not proper, in my view. If he hadn’t seemed so mysterious -- enough so that I could somehow ignore the fact he was a demon – I’m sure I would never have given him the time of day. I don’t believe I was ever a mystery to him, however.”

Anathema nodded, inhaling the fumes from her whiskey glass.

“Yes, I understand,” she said. “I often surprise Newt. He rarely surprises me.”

Aziraphale nodded.

“Exactly,” he said. He poured a few more fingers into their glasses.

“He liked surprising me too, I’m sure. Found it fun to flummox me, poke holes in the façade as it were. We might have gone on like that for another few thousand years, too, if the forces of Heaven and Hell hadn’t got tired of making lists and looking for flaming swords.

‘We’ve only got eleven years,’ Crowley said to me. ‘We have to work together.’

“He was very direct. You can imagine how I responded. Or maybe you can’t. The idea made so much sense, but angels do NOT consort with demons. My own sense of propriety allowed for an occasional plate of boeuf and a shared bottle of bordeaux – that was lunch, not consorting or anything dubious like that -- but certainly angels and demons could never embark on a shared _mission_. We were on our way to open a bottle of wine that day, if I remember right.

“I always justified those bottles of wine as ‘gathering intelligence,’ by the way. I was learning about possible demon plots, you see. I would drink quite a lot of wine, and the next day I would think, ‘Oops, forgot to ask about the plots again.’” Aziraphale laughed softly.

“Sometimes we need an excuse,” Anathema sipped her scotch. “I used prophecies.”

“Yes. Armageddon turned out to be a wonderful excuse, although I had been finding excuses for centuries. He was so much fun, you see. And, oh, my dear, he was someone _to talk to._ I know this sounds absurd, but I was _lonely_. No one to talk to upstairs, you see. All that power. All that glory. All the potential of those endless lives and what did they want to do? Locate one trivial, flaming sword. Start another bloody War to End all Wars. And watch _The Sound of Music_ for the umpteenth time. Unbelievable.”

“ _The Sound of Music._ ” Anathema shook her head. She thought she ought to find out about that flaming sword sometime since it always seemed to pop up in conversation. She did not want to distract the angel, however.

“Indeed. And with the ability to create anything out of pure air, out of nothingness, what did they do? Count their bloody flaming swords. I don’t know how many times I heard about that silly sword. Why? If you drop a golf ball in the middle of the pond, you don’t spend years looking for it. You make another one.”

The angel wasn’t always clear on small details, Anathema reflected. She let the sword go.

“Back to Crowley,” Aziraphale said. “Like I said, I could not talk to the heavenly crowd. I could hardly talk to humans or demons about my demon _friend_. My only friend, although I did not know it at the time.

“I still thought Michael and Gabriel might be my friends. I will confess I used to castigate myself harshly for my lack of affection for Uriel or Sandalphon, but Sandalphon… What was so bad about Sodom or Gomorrah? Sandalphon was a bully. Yes, he was an _angel_ and I had this… well, reverence for angels. No matter how hard I tried, though, I never felt pleased to see any of them, not even Gabriel. He was so self-righteous and … condescending. Yes, I had no one to talk with who rode up that up escalator.”

“That does sound lonely.”

“So lonely. Most of the time, I could ignore the feeling. I ate delicious food, attended art shows, went dancing, enjoyed concerts, plays and then movies. I could pretend I was fine. My life was this pretty little fiction -- except for one meddlesome demon who kept turning up at the oddest times, usually exactly the right time. He was amazing that way. But the fact remained that he was a demon, and Gabriel and the others had poisoned me.

‘A _demon_ can never be an angel’s friend, right?’ Gabriel once said to me. ‘A _demon_ can never be trusted. A _demon_ is a lower type of person, a fact clearly shown by the fact they live in hell. They lack of enthusiasm for the finer things in life. I hear they even listen to something called rock down there -- loud, terrible caterwauling sounds. Disgusting.’”

“Why did he care anyway? Anathema asked. “What business was it of his?”

“Ah. A natural question.” Aziraphale took the last champagne truffle and popped the whole thing into his mouth. A tin of shortbread biscuits materialized between them. He lifted the lid and smiled, gesturing to her to help herself.

“Why does prejudice exist, down here or anywhere else? He didn’t know any demons. But he needed to have demons to put down so he could build himself up. I know that sounds absurd, but I am sure I am right. Heaven is supposed to be perfect. But what if you could care less about the number of swords in the inventory? What if inventorying is more your idea of hell than heaven? People who don’t feel they belong are often the fiercest defenders of the status quo and, after all, angels are simply poor, dead people who wake up to find themselves counting swords.

“But I was quite intimidated by Gabriel and his crowd. For one thing, they _all_ talked like him and it was like we communicated using some secret code. We didn’t kill people, you understand. We smote them. And oh my, did they get smitten -- all over the place. That lot was truly drooling over the thought of Armageddon.

“Anyway, I well remember the day I… turned, for lack of a better word, the day I had my epiphany.

‘I am sure you would never spend time with a demon,’ Gabriel said to me.

“His eyes were so cold. Had he found out about Crowley and me? Had we been seen? We always tried to be careful, but angels can be tricky to spot, once you hide the wings. And,” Aziraphale poured more scotch, “Crowley and I definitely drink too much sometimes. Not good for keeping track of angels.

“Still, I now realize how lucky that conversation was for me. In that moment, I saw through the whole thing. Do you understand?”

“You had been caught?” Anathema was a bit lost. 

“Well, I wasn’t sure, but I had a flash of insight. Suddenly, my dear, I knew. Gabriel was a racist. Why the whole angelic view of demons reeked of racism. Inferior? Inferior because they preferred Bowie to Vivaldi? Because they didn’t choose to live in that sterile box atop the up escalator? Absurd. Without debating the merits of musical genres, I saw quite clearly that Gabriel had no idea what he was talking about. Crowley quite liked Vivaldi. He liked musicals, too, lots of musicals, whether the protagonists were singing in the rain, trying to reach the wizard or dressing up as cats. He had impeccable taste for the most part. And he was far more fun than anyone travelling up the up escalator.”

“I see,” Anathema nodded. “You must have been terrified, though, thinking that Gabriel had found you out.”

“Oh, I was terrified. When you only have one friend, the idea of losing that friend… Whatever would I have done? Crowley didn’t help either. He kept taking long chances, sending false reports to Hell, lying about… well, lying about his whole life! At one point, I said to him, ‘If hell finds out they won’t just be angry, they’ll destroy you.’ He just ignored me. He had this confidence that he wouldn’t be caught, that he’d be able to talk his way out of anything.”

“Well, he’d been playing Secret Agent Man for a long time,” Anathema said thoughtfully.

“What’s that?” Aziraphale picked up a biscuit.

“Playing secret agent. You know. Johnny Rivers.”

In a slightly off-key, breathy voice redolent of scotch, she began singing:

“There's a man who leads a life of danger  
To everyone he meets he stays a stranger  
With every move he makes  
Another chance he takes  
Odds are he won't live to see tomorrow  
  
Secret Agent Man  
Secret Agent Man  
They've given you a number and taken away your name  
  
Beware of pretty faces that you find  
A pretty face can hide an evil mind  
Oh, be careful what you say  
Or you'll give yourself away  
Odds are you won't live to see tomorrow.”

“That song,” she concluded. “I’d say that’s Crowley’s life. Yours, too, now that I think of it.”

They sat in silence a few minutes.

“I imagine he kissed persuasive lips, too” Aziraphale said finally, with a soft sigh. “I mean, I can’t be sure, but just look at him. Those men and women in all those bars certainly could not have been oblivious. I never was. I thought I should have been, of course. Troublesome thoughts, those, or so I had been taught.”

“What?!” Anathema exclaimed. She struggled though an alcoholic haze to believe what she had just heard. Troublesome thoughts?

“Anyway, that’s my problem,” Aziraphale continued. “I had been hearing the anti-demon party line for so long I had absorbed at least some of Gabriel’s views.

“'We are hereditary enemies,' I once explained to Crowley. Crowley ignored me as usual.

“I kept explaining to him again and again that I could not get involved in his plans to stop Armageddon, but at a critical time, he went straight to the heart of the matter.

‘Not very big on wine in Heaven, are they though?’ Crowley said. ‘You won’t get any more in heaven, or single malt scotch or little frou frou cocktails with umbrellas.’

“He always knew my weak spots. I missed those frou frou cocktails right away, had visions of little dancing umbrellas lost forever. No more Chateauneuf Du Papes, no more Dragon Rolls or chocolate mousse. No more lunches. _And no more Crowley._

“I had never thought about that before. It’s such a big thing, Armageddon, that you can miss the small details. You get hung up on the destruction of the Earth and forget that without the Earth you won’t have any place to meet your only friend. The one person who makes it fun. The one person who can make bangers and mash in a littered park in the middle of London into an adventure. Crowley knew how to cheer me up. Somehow he always turned up with chocolates or wine when I felt down. He would suggest a walk by the water or brunch at a new restaurant, always when I needed help most. I’ve never understood how he knew.

“I know you won’t believe this, but for the longest time, I just took his attentions entirely for granted. That’s part of being an angel I think. You just expect things to work out. It’s the ineffable plan. You don’t know what the plan is, but you are sure the plan works out -- like the ineffable plan is somehow all about YOU. 

“Before non-Armageddon, Crowley kept searching out sushi restaurants for me, watching me nibble bits of ginger and pieces of hamachi or octopus. Oh, he enjoyed himself. He drank hot sake, cold sake, this sake, that sake, and an occasional plum wine. But I hardly noticed that the meal itself was for me. He could have imbibed random rice wines anywhere, but I was too preoccupied with the quality of the sea eel to wonder why he was going to all these Japanese restaurants.”

“Well, I’m sure the sake made him happy,” Anathema said.

“Yes, but he didn’t need to plunk himself down in the babble of a restaurant crowd to get happy. Now, don’t get me wrong. He had an agenda. He was quite concerned about Armageddon. He did want me to work with him. But the sushi. That was for me. That was to make _me_ happy. He could as easily have brought a few bottles into the bookshop.”

“He doesn’t like Japanese food?”

“He doesn’t eat. Oh, every so often, out of curiosity. A taste of something to complement a spirit, perhaps. But he never did quite adopt the food habit.”

“Ah.” Anathema picked up a biscuit.

“I was so self-centered, though, and honestly a bit of a prig myself. I never noticed.”

“Impossible,” Anathema said.

“Oh, yes. I remember one lunch at Kamehachi. They make the most amazing chirashi. I was eating a tuna flight at the time.” Aziraphale’s eyes looked off into the distance, into another time.

'Don’t much like to visit heaven, do you?' he said to me.

“Well, I was indignant for some reason. I told him they were busy up there. I hated to interrupt and all. He arched that aggravating eyebrow. The eyebrow that said I was… well, not lying. Angels don’t lie. But shading the truth a bit strongly perhaps.”

'Heaven is marvelous,' I said defensively.

“The eyebrow arched a bit higher. Crowley stayed silent. And somehow he got me started. I admitted the architecture left a bit to be desired. Told him I liked flourishes, little details.”

‘You like it fussy,’ Crowley said to me, ‘with soft, comfortable furniture, a bit of clutter and even _knickknacks_.’ He said knickknacks with the faintest edge of derision, more in amusement than contempt perhaps, but still... I was on the defensive. I was about to snap at him.

‘You also like music, books, and delicious food,’ Crowley went on. ‘Real music. How many times can you listen to _Sixteen Going on Seventeen_ and, bloody hell, that awful goatherd song? Face it, you find heaven less fun than the average pub crawl in Saudi Arabia.’

“He reached over and took my hand. Held my hand. He held my hand. Well, that silenced me. He stroked it, ran his thumb over my palm, his fingers over my wrist. I mean, I was still afraid of ‘fraternizing’ and there I was. I stayed that way for a minute, but then I pulled my hand away. I could hardly tell Gabriel I was gathering intelligence if someone saw _that._ They might have suspected I was… well…”

“Kissing persuasive lips?” Anathema grinned.

“Oh dear. Exactly. I did not know what to do. I was afraid of offending Crowley since I did not know what was happening. I so often did not know what was happening by that time. My last trip to heaven had been uncomfortable, to say the very least. Gabriel knew something. I was sure of it. And he knew that I knew that he knew.”

Aziraphale set his glass down hard on the table.

“Crowley always went too fast for me.”

He stood abruptly and started to pace.

“Oh, dammit, Anathema. There he was, sitting across the table from me. That crooked smile, that world-weary expression, scruffy red hair cut shorter than usual, still beautiful. I like his hair best long and curly, but no matter. My only friend, my perfect friend except he came from the wrong place. And I wasn’t ready. I was stuck on frou frou cocktails and the end of the world.

”I had so many chances! Once he careened up to me in his car yelling, ‘angel, whatever I said I didn’t mean it. Look, I apologized. We can run away together to Alpha Centauri.’

“Run away together! I ignored him. I kept turning the conversation back to food, to Armageddon, and to ethical minutiae. I kept changing the subject.

“’I am quite clear if I can reach the right people, I can fix this,’ I said to him. I was always talking about the fixing things, about the end of the world, never about us. Well, he asked an excellent question back during that time: how can somebody as clever as I am be so stupid? Even when I was at fault, I kept I forgiving _him,_ always looking at the mote in his eye, never at the beam in my own.

“I must have aggravated him so fiercely. He just ignored me. Oh, every so often I broke through that devil-may-care attitude.

“’When I am up in the stars I won’t even think about you!’ he shouted at me once.

“That terrified me. I’ve never been to Alpha Centauri. What if it’s nice? What if he really decided to go to Alpha Centauri? What if he left me? At the time, I kept steering the conversation back to the coming war.

“’We could stop this war,’ he said. Well, stopping a war. What’s nobler than that?”

“Nothing, I’m sure,” Anathema answered, suspecting but still not sure where the conversation was headed.

“The Great Plan was my defense. That and a certain moral code. The code that said I could not explore the hand that was so gently holding mine. Angels are not supposed to … we are supposed to be spiritual beings. Spiritual beings don’t need food, drink, or....

“’We can go off together,’ he said while we were standing in a bandstand. And I knew he did not mean go find a flat to share where we could do crossword puzzles together. He did not mean… He did not want…”

Anathema rescued the angel:

“He did not want a platonic relationship?” She asked.

“After all this time! Six thousand years. Besides, angels don’t do that sort of thing! We can go off together, he said. What does that even mean? How long have we been friends? He asked. You won’t believe this, but I said: ‘Friends? We’re not friends!’”

“I am pretty sure he ignored you when you said that,” Anathema soothed him.

“Well, yes, he seemed to. He ignored me when I told him there was no ‘our side.’ I told him it was over, and he just walked away. We simply went on about rescuing Tadfield and the rest of the world. He never referred to our bandstand meeting again. Just drove up in his flaming car to help me. He helped Adam understand what he needed to do to save the world – so brilliant, that boy – and then he… we… went on with our lives.”

Anathema was able to read between the lines.

“Except he hasn’t asked you to run away to the Kasbah with him for awhile now, has he? He hasn’t tried to hold your hand? Why do you suppose that is?”

“I told him angels did not do that kind of thing. I think he believed me!”

“Is it true?” Anathema asked, curious.

“Does it matter? I’m not exactly the poster boy for angels now, am I?”

Anathema grabbed the scotch bottle and drained its contents into their glasses.

“I believe we require more of those delicious truffles,” she declared.

A box of Teuscher champagne truffles appeared. She took one and handed one to the angel.

“Is he punishing you?” she asked. “That seems like a demonic thing to do.”

“I have wondered.”

“Did you ask?”

“Ask what?”

“Ask him. ‘Are you punishing me?’ I mean, why not go directly to the point?”

Aziraphale looked shocked.

“I could never do that!” he exclaimed.

“You have to know,” Anathema said sensibly. “Maybe he is just respecting what he believes are your wishes.”

“But those are not my wishes!”

“And how is he supposed to know that? How many times did you reject him?”

“Er, I am not sure. I suppose the times when he asked me to run away. When he held my hand that day. The times he suggested we have a nightcap and he, well, he moved into my space? I always backed away. The times he rescued me, some of those might be possible.”

“Why did you back away?” Anathema stared, mystified.

“Crowley always went too fast for me!” he repeated.

“I understand that. How many times did you say no, though? At a certain point, I expect he believed you. You told him no, directly and indirectly. Maybe he truly believes angels don’t do romance. Or at least he thinks you don’t.”

“I don’t!”

“You think you might like to, though?”

“With Crowley. Only Crowley. But he no longer appears to be interested.”

“How can somebody as clever as you be so stupid?” Anathema asked.

“He said that, too,” Aziraphale admitted.

“I know. You told me,” Anathema said. “Unfortunately I have to go soon. If I miss the next train, I will be stuck in London for the night. Newt is waiting.”

Aziraphale nodded unhappily.

“I am going to take pity on you, though,” she finished. “You are going to take Crowley out to dinner tonight. I suppose you could order in pizza if you prefer. You are going to tell him how handsome he looks. Or if that’s simply too traumatic, you may say nothing. At some point during dinner… let’s break this into easy steps… after you finish your appetizer or first piece of pizza, you are going to take his hand. You will stroke his hand. Then you will move into -- instead of out of -- his personal space. You will tell him you think he’s wonderful. That part’s not optional. You may run your fingers along his jawline if you have the courage.”

“What if he rejects me?” Aziraphale said softly.

“I am a witch,” Anathema said. “I drink and I know things. Aziraphale, the problem with saying no is sometimes people believe you mean what you say. It’s a tribute to Crowley that he did the honorable thing and stopped pressuring you. You have both wasted a great deal of time, though, centuries I suspect. This ends now. Tonight, look into his eyes and don’t look away. Give him his chance. He’s waited so many years. A whole world to choose from, yet where does he spend most of his evenings? In a bookshop. It’s not the books, believe me.

“When he rescued the world from Armageddon, he wanted to help the Earth, but make no mistake: he was saving your life first and foremost. He did not want to survive in a world without his angel. He loved that angel so much that he let the angel define their relationship. That was a mistake. You have to rectify that mistake. If my detailed instructions somehow get derailed, just grab him and kiss him.”

“Oh, I can’t,” Aziraphale protested, raising his open palms in front of him. “I wouldn’t know how.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Anathema said confidently. “Just remember the important parts. You stand very close to him and you caress him. Then you can start babbling at him. Tell him how you feel. I’m sure he won’t let you talk for long.”

Anathema put on her shawl and picked up her purse.

“Just hug him, angel, and don’t let go.”

______________________________________________________________________________

And later that night, after he heard familiar footsteps coming up to the apartment from the bookstore below, as he finished making a coq au vin to pair with the perfect pinot noir and the chilled, stuffed mushroom appetizer, he leapt into the one place where one conflicted angel had feared to tread.

He didn’t do it perfectly. He burned the coq au vin. He stepped on Crowley’s toes. He babbled until Crowley started laughing, laughing hard, even as he started removing Aziraphale’s bowtie and jacket. But he managed that hug, and he managed not to let go. He held on while his best friend slowly led him into what would become _their_ bedroom.


End file.
